Mike Ledonne's Groover Quartet - Turn It Up! Live At The Sidedoor! - Double Album Alert! CD 1 Turn it Up! LIVE At The Sidedoor! (2025) CD 2 Anniversary Quartet (2000) Mike LeDonne's Groover Quartet returns! Featuring Mike LeDonne on Hammond B3 Organ, Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone, Peter Bernstein on guitar and Joe Farnsworth on drums. Celebrating more than twenty-five years together as jazz's preeminent organ group, this New York-based ensemble's broad repertoire choice, swinging ethos, and dynamic performance style has helped establish them as peerless in their standard bearing of this classic jazz style. Within jazz today, it is rare indeed when a musical group can remain intact for long stretches of time with limited changes of personnel. Groover Quartet have managed this for 20 years. When Mike LeDonne's Groover Quartet recorded the Anniversary Quartet in 2004 it was back when they first started really focusing on using tunes by the R&B groups Mike grew up listening to and making them into vehicles for swinging and for improvisation. The Original Groover Quartet, or "OGQ" are some of the baddest cats on the planet bar none. They have been friends for decades, started their families during their time together and have been all over the world as a group. They are a musical family and you can hear that in the music. In 2024 the quartet arrived at the wonderfully intimate club "The Side Door" to record a new live album in front of an audience that simply loves jazz. As ever, the band members showed their virtuosity and unique styles, whilst proving once again that the Groover Quartet in full flow is something to behold!
Mike Ledonne & Groover Quartet + Gospel Choir - Wonderful / Mike LeDonne expands the sound of the quartet with the most beautiful instrument of all - the human voice by way of a 14 piece gospel choir! - Love is the organic thread that ties the repertoire together. You could say this is a love letter to my wife Margaret and my daughter Mary (pictured on the cover) to whom the title track "Wonderful" is dedicated. It is also meant to shine a particularly bright light on my daughter Mary, who is multiply disabled and truly "Wonderful". I chose the titles for their significance to my life's journey after my daughter Mary made her entrance 19 years ago - a journey that has proven to me, without a doubt, that love is the most powerful force in the universe. I can't even begin to list all the incredible things I've learned from her, but it was my love for her that led me to start the Disability Pride Parade in New York City. The idea was to bring large numbers of the disability community out for a joyous day of celebrating who and what they really are: just another diverse and beautiful aspect of humanity. I hoped that once non-disabled people saw this big party coming down the street, they would want to join it, and that is exactly what happened. Once the hang was on, barriers and divisions fell away, and the word "disability" began to be redefined. When I started out, I had no idea how to create a parade or a non-profit organization, but through Mary I found strengths in myself that I didn't know I had. When people thank me for my work creating the parade, I always tell them it wasn't me - it was Mary. Mike LeDonne
Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. Love is the organic thread that ties the repertoire together. You could say this is a love letter to my wife Margaret and my daughter Mary (pictured on the cover) to whom the title track Wonderful is dedicated. It is also meant to shine a particularly bright light on my daughter Mary, who is multiply disabled and truly Wonderful. I chose the titles for their significance to my life's journey after my daughter Mary made her entrance 19 years ago - a journey that has proven to me, without a doubt, that love is the most powerful force in the universe. I can't even begin to list all the incredible things I've learned from her, but it was my love for her that led me to start the Disability Pride Parade in New York City. The idea was to bring large numbers of the disability community out for a joyous day of celebrating who and what they really are: just another diverse and beautiful aspect of humanity. I hoped that once non-disabled people saw this big party coming down the street, they would want to join it, and that is exactly what happened. Once the hang was on, barriers and divisions fell away, and the word disability began to be redefined. When I started out, I had no idea how to create a parade or a non-profit organization, but through Mary I found strengths in myself that I didn't know I had. When people thank me for my work creating the parade, I always tell them it wasn't me - it was Mary. Mike LeDonne
Mike LeDonne belongs to an elite group of musicians - those who have mastered the piano AND the organ while creating original voices for each. However, here on It's all Your Fault, LeDonne sits down at the organ, puts his foot on the pedals and lays down some of the hippest organ licks you're likely to hear. Two groups are featured on this recording. Mike LeDonne's Groover Quartet has had the rare opportunity to play and record together for twenty years and counting. They had no difficulty integrating their sound into this all-star big band put together by Mike and his preferred arranger and conductor, Dennis Mackrel. Recorded in the famed Van Gelder studio and actually using the original Hammond C-3 organ that Jimmy Smith et al. Used to record the music within this recording is adventurous. It's a continuation of the groove that was established years ago by organists interacting with big bands and it reveals to us the Blues, the Rhythm & Blues and the Jazz that Mike heard coming up through the jazz ranks.
Unfortunately it's not very often that we get to hear Mike LeDonne, world-renowned Hammond B-3 organist and leader of the acclaimed Groover Quartet, fronting a piano trio session-especially one that unfolds in as swinging, soulful and intuitive fashion. But given the caliber of artists involved, this won't come as a surprise since on this CD LeDonne works two of his closest and most accomplished friends: bassist Christian McBride and drummer Lewis Nash. It's no coincidence, then, that this unprecedented studio alliance sparks instant chemistry and conviviality. With a stack of new arrangements under his arm, LeDonne and company made the trek across the Hudson to the famed Van Gelder Studio and emerged with an album remarkable for it's spontaneity, creativity and sheer joy in the act of making music.
For three decades Mike LeDonne has been an exceptional avatar of the Hammond B3 organ. Forged by his impressive jazz apprenticeship, with the likes of Milt Jackson, George Coleman and Benny Golson, LeDonne comes from a long and distinguished line of masters of that instrument. And for eighteen years, he's lead the Groover Quartet his formidable foursome consisting of tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Joe Farnsworth. Joining the quartet is the great drummer Mike Clark. After collaborations with Herbie Hancock, Christian McBride, Nicholas Payton and others, Clark has influenced a generation of percussionists and brings his own unmistakable style to two tracks on the CD.
